Price’s Wife Wants Those with HIV Quarantined

Betty Rice, a state representative in Georgia and the wife of former Congressman and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, said during a hearing recently that she wished there was a way to quarantine those who are HIV-positive.

Republican state Rep. Betty Price, a former anesthesiologist who represents people living in the northern Atlanta area, asked in a hearing this week “what are we legally able to do” to limit the spread of HIV throughout the state.

“I don’t want to say the quarantine word — but I guess I just said it,” Price said to Dr. Pascale Wortley, director of the Georgia Department of Public Health’s HIV epidemiology section. “Is there an ability, since I would guess that public dollars are expended heavily in prophylaxis and treatment of this condition, so we have a public interest in curtailing the spread. … Are there any methods legally that we could do that would curtail the spread?”…

“It’s almost frightening the number of people who are living that are … carriers with the potential to spread,” Price said during the hearing. “Whereas in the past, they died more readily, and then at that point, they’re not posing a risk. So we’ve got a huge population posing a risk if they’re not in treatment.”

Yeah, so just let them die quicker! Or quarantine them! Or here’s a better idea: How about making sure that everyone who has HIV has access to Truvada and other anti-retroviral drugs that are staggeringly effective at preventing the spread of that virus even for those having totally unprotected sex. Taken correctly, they reduce one’s viral load to zero and make it virtually impossible to contract the virus. But it costs thousands of dollars a month and there is inadequate funding.

I mean, if you really want to prevent the spread instead of just take easy shots at gay people, you should support funding for access to those drugs for everyone who has the virus and everyone at significant risk of contracting it. But I guarantee you she doesn’t do that. Because she’s a bigot, not someone genuinely concerned about protecting anyone’s health.